paroxysm.

To the great credit of Portugal laurels and American junipers, be it
remembered that they remained untouched amidst the general havoc: hence
men should learn to ornament chiefly with such trees as are able to
withstand accidental severities, and not subject themselves to the
vexation of a loss which may befall them once perhaps in ten years, yet
may hardly be recovered through the whole course of their lives.

As it appeared afterwards, the ilexes were much injured, the cypresses
were half destroyed, the arbutuses lingered on, but never recovered; and
the bays, laurustines, and laurels, were killed to the ground; and the
very wild hollies, in hot aspects, were so much affected that they cast
all their leaves.

By the 14th January the snow was entirely gone; the turnips emerged not
damaged at all, save in sunny places; the wheat looked delicately, and
the garden plants were well preserved; for snow is the most kindly mantle
that infant vegetation can be wrapped in: were it not for that friendly
meteor no vegetable life could exist at all in northerly regions. Yet in
Sweden the earth in April is not divested of snow for more than a
fortnight before the face of the country is covered with flowers.

LETTER LXII.

There were some circumstances attending the remarkable frost in January
1776, so singular and striking, that a short detail of them may not be
unacceptable.

The most certain way to be exact will be to copy the passages from my
journal, which were taken from time to time, as things occurred. But it
may be proper previously to remark that the first week in January was
uncommonly wet, and drowned with vast rains from every quarter; from
whence may be inferred, as there is great reason to believe is the case,
that intense frosts seldom take place till the earth is perfectly glutted
and chilled with water; and hence dry autumns are seldom followed by
rigorous winters.

January 7th.--Snow driving all the day, which was followed by frost,
sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass overwhelmed
all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the gates, and filling
the hollow lanes.

On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much abroad; and thinks he never
before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian weather. Many of
the narrow roads were now filled above the tops of the hedges, through
which the snow was driven into most romantic and grotesque shapes, so
striking to th